08 Dec The End of My Life as an Aspiring Genius by Rachelle Toarmino
This is the end of my life as an aspiring genius
It is also true that this was your idea
I have tried liking people around
I have a feeling about the difference between uncover and discover
When I want answers, and you want attention—what then?
About you I’m hands on and pressing for details
If the thing about rhyme is I think you hear it coming
If the thing about form is it’s physics taken personally
When the room is a living room and in it
We lapse into a consequence
You and your yesterday smell
Me and my big ideas
Next thing I know I would love you your whole life
I would not turn you in
I am oh in for it
About the Poet
photo credit Joshua Thermidor
Rachelle Toarmino is a poet and multidisciplinary writer from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection That Ex (Big Lucks Books, 2020) and several chapbooks, most recently Comeback (Foundlings Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Electric Literature, Iterant, Literary Hub, Poets.org, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in poetry at UMass Amherst, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is also the founding editor in chief of the literary journal Peach Mag and the creator and lead instructor of Beauty School, an independent poetry school. She lives in Buffalo.
This poem was recently published in the first issue of the new journal Spirit Duplicator.
Related Event
- Rachelle Toarmino will read from her new manuscript Audiobiography on Saturday, Dec. 14 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Earl W. Brydges Public Library, 1425 Main St. in Niagara Falls, NY in conjunction with the opening of an exhibition visual artist Dana Murray Tyrrell’s Love Canal paintings. The event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.